Any tips for Single Class Priest as Main Character

[Rimiu]

Hello, I intend to play a single class priest as my main character and wondered which deity to pick. Preferably hybrid support/"dps".

I know priest has high cast times but I still wanna make the best out of the Situation.

Priest builds in general never seemed really popular at all and the stuff that I found seems super dated and partially not even working anymore.

 

 

I intend to play on PotD, for whats it worth.

 

I appreciate all help.

Edited May 7, 2020 by Rimiu

[Boeroer]

All "pure" casteres have longish casting times in general. Priest is no exception.  

They seem to be quite long but since the whole combat got slowed down compared to PoE it's actually not that bad. E.g. the recovery of normal weapon attacks is also a lot longer now. 

Priest is still one of the most impactful classes in Deadfire, especially when going with a party. 

The fact that nearly every official Ultimate playthrough so far was done with a (multiclass) Priest should give you a hint that they can't be that bad.

The only problem with Priests is that you are not as flexible with your casting portfolio as a Wizard is (because he has grimoires, Priests do not). You will not gain all spells at level-up as in PoE but will have to pick a few. That means you have to pick well. Usually there are a few spells per tier which are really good, some that are circumstancially good and some which are strictly inferior. Stuff like Devotions for the Faithful you might always want to pick for example.

In general there is not that much "building" with a SC Priest because the choices are rather limited but you have plenty of ability points. So eventually you are taking stuff you don't really need just because you have to pick something. So not very complicated after all. The biggest decision is indeed to pick the deity since that gives you access to certain spells you can't have if you pick another god.

The different subclasses tend to different roles. e.g. a Priest of Eothas leans towards Protection and Restoration while a Priest of Magran is more about Punishment. Skaen is more like the Assassin of Priests and so on. The most unique one is Prist of Woedica I would say (has the most unique spells nobody else gets). Berath can be a good mix of support and damage dealing. But I'd take a look at the subclasses and then decide what I like best:  

https://pillarsofeternity2.wiki.fextralife.com/Priest

 

Edited May 7, 2020 by Boeroer

[AeonsLegend]

Cast times aren't much of an issue. It's more the recovery that slows down everything you're doing. But with enough dex + recovery cuts you can make a single class priest that's really strong. Even in melee with minor avatar. I haven't played much of priest as it is such a slow class it's not really my style. There's a couple of spells such as salvation of time that can really change the way things work on during battles.

Looking at different dieties they bring different spells that alter the way you play. You can investigate the different skills and see what type of playstyle you prefer.

[Boeroer]

Small addition: some of the "non-subclass-related" offensive spells of Priests target the Will defense (e.g. Divine Mark, Shining Beacon etc.) which is rather unusual. Luckily it's pretty easy to reduce Will on enemies: club + modal (-25 directly), Miasma of Dull-Mindedness (-40 via RES/INT debuff) and Dazzling Lights (-10 directly, doesn't stack with club) for example do send Will down the drain pretty fast so that your Priest can then apply some good hits/crits with his a Shining Beacon.

The other offensive ones often target Reflex which is also rel. easy to debuff (also with Miasma for example).

So Wizard + Priest go together quite well in a party in general.

Will and Reflex are often not as high as Fortitude on enemies.

If you have a Furyshaper in the party then you want to pick Withdraw as a Priest: you can withdraw the ward which makes it invulnerable but it will still work its magic. You an even use it to block chokepoints that way etc. You see how some circumstancial spells can become quite important if paired with the right party members and their abilities. Death Godlikes and Streetfighters for example like Barring Death's Door + Salvation of Time.  
 

[thelee]

5 hours ago, Rimiu said:

Hello, I intend to play a single class priest as my main character and wondered which deity to pick. Preferably hybrid support/"dps".

I know priest has high cast times but I still wanna make the best out of the Situation.

Priest builds in general never seemed really popular at all and the stuff that I found seems super dated and partially not even working anymore.

 

 

I intend to play on PotD, for whats it worth.

 

I appreciate all help.

i would say for hybrid support/dps as caster you're best off with berath or magran.

berath: you get touch of rot and rot skulls. the former gives you something useful at AL1, and rot skulls is just a pretty good effect and gives the priest some damage diversity in both type and defense. you can lean on your other priest spells and berath comes with some useful support spells for free.

magran: i really enjoyed it as an offensive build. you get tons of extra damage spells, and even though any SC priest can pick it up, magran's might at AL9 is a really amazing single-target spell and fits in thematically. only problem here is that against fire immunes, fire absorbers, or high-fire-AR you're kinda screwed. you can't even really fall back on spiritual weapon because the lash is fire. these might be good times to become more of a support caster. by the way, magran combines particularly well with Marux Amanth (10% chance for priest spells to echo) since echoing spells is more useful when they are something like fan of flames and not, say, devotions for the faithful. there's plenty of other gear that boosts fire-keyworded spells so you can really lean in to this as an offensive caster pretty hard. (if you don't care about SC or the AL8/9 spells, multiclassing with evoker has the odd effect that the few evocation spells the magran priest gets as a bonus also benefit from the evoker's 15% echo chance (works multiplicatively/independently with the marux amanth, with the very low chance that you can actually get double echos on a cast), though not the bonus PL)

 

 

also, if you haven't seen it: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/227477-pillars-of-eternity-ii-deadfire/faqs/76599/priest

Edited May 7, 2020 by thelee

[Rimiu]

Thank you so much for the lengthy responses and tips. It means a lot to me.

 

I was initially undecided on Berath/Woedica/Wael but wasn't sure for example how to make Wael Single Class work.

Berath and Magran as thelee recommend seem to be the "easier" option to me to cover my bases with damage spells and then pick the support spells myself.

 

I'm gonna read through the link you provided as well. Thank you so much.

 

 

[Boeroer]

Wael is really good on the defensive side though. No (desperate) need for thick armor or/and shield if you can have some quick Mirrored Images. That can make you cast faster  (less armor recovery) and more precisely (no ACC malus from shield).

 

Edited May 7, 2020 by Boeroer

[Rimiu]

18 minutes ago, Boeroer said:

Wael is really good on the defensive side though. No (desperate) need for thick armor or/and shield if you can have some quick Mirrored Images. That can make you cast faster  (less armor recovery) and more precisely (no ACC malus from shield).

 

 

I was initially thinking about a "Reach Cleric" With Wael + Chromoprismatic Quarterstaff but I don't wanna start a playthrough only to find out the synergy doesn't work or is nonexistant.

[Boeroer]

In general this can work well. Only the modal of Quarterstaff doesn't stack with the usual deflection buffs like Mirrored Images.

Chromoprismatic Staff comes a bit late, but before that you can use the Spine of Thicket Green which has a nice enchantment for Restoration spells.

[2MuchWatching]

Eothas is ideal subclass for support and works really well as long as you don't mind being goody goody. Find a nice weapon to contribute to dps and use spells for buffing your mates. I'm playing ranged with light armor/robes and cast times/recovery not an issue. 

[thelee]

 

4 hours ago, Rimiu said:

 

I was initially thinking about a "Reach Cleric" With Wael + Chromoprismatic Quarterstaff but I don't wanna start a playthrough only to find out the synergy doesn't work or is nonexistant.

 

the only thing i'd add to boeroer's note is that if you don't pick your spells in a complementary way, you may find that in late game you'll have so many spells that you won't really be doing much attacking, kind of wasting your weapon choice/investment. though wael (and skaen) are a bit more resistant to martial/caster action economy because so many of their bonus spells either have no recovery and/or are very fast cast (arcane veil, mirror image, llengrath's, escape, finishing blow, shadowing beyond). 

 

though for any weapon-based "dps" priest, i'd try hard to do something that relies on a summoned/spiritual weapon. the lash is very very strong (up to +31%), and if you roleplay your character correctly you could arguably one of the strongest weapons in the game at your disposal (woedica arguably has the best weapons in the game! at level 16-20 you get legendary monk fists and with a +31% raw lash is extremely hard to beat)

 

edit: for chromoprismatic staff you may do better with e.g. magran, because the +1 fire PL gives them huge benefit across the board.

Edited May 8, 2020 by thelee

[Elric Galad]

One thing to note about SC Priest is that Symbols spells are among the best AoE Damage spells of the whole game, are incredibly easy to use and also bring some utility. But Hand of Weal and Woe isn't half bad bad for Woedica.

Magran's Might is a good Tier IX, single target complement to Symbols most Incarnate are either bad (Wael's) or broken (Eothas, one of the trio does not even act).

Eothas is meh for SC cause it does not bring much new spells and you'll have enough Ability point to pick this if you need.

For a pure powergaming perspective, I would pick Wael cause it bring new stuff to the class which are useful for a caster (contrary to Skaen, which is as good, but bring stuff more useful for spellsword hybrids).

But you're going to be a very powerful caster anyway, so feel free to pick what you want.

Edited May 8, 2020 by Elric Galad

[2MuchWatching]

I dunno. I'm having fun with eothas priest. Its got everything i need to boost my party. Good to know the incarnate is bugged though. Shame.

[Boeroer]

Only one of the three incarnates that appear is bugged. The other two will work fine. And the buggy one can still soak damage. 

[Elric Galad]

11 minutes ago, Boeroer said:

Only one of the three incarnates that appear is bugged. The other two will work fine. And the buggy one can still soak damage. 

Still top Tier Incarnate. But Relying on a buggy spell is annoying (for me, due to Game Mechanics Sensitivity, you know).

Also Eothas Symbol is arguably the best. This All Defenses bonus is neat.

I don't say it's a bad Subclass.  I simply prefer the others

[thelee]

7 hours ago, Elric Galad said:

Magran's Might is a good Tier IX

for anyone who's not aware, one of the reasons why i think this spell absolute rocks is that--contrary to what the tooltip says--the actual little projectiles that hit the enemy interrupt on hit, not crit. in addition to doing some nice damage and stripping away buffs (in a way that can't be reflected), you are essentially stunlocking the enemy the entire time - only enemies immune to interrupts will be able to do anything while being hit with this (and there are only three off the top of my head: memory hoarder, oracle, and dorudugan). in this way it's much better than an actual hard cc effect like paralyze or stun (and ironically, it's the slower pace of the projectiles versus e.g. minoletta's spell that really makes this work so well)

 

2 hours ago, Elric Galad said:

Also Eothas Symbol is arguably the best. This All Defenses bonus is neat.

agree on this. afflictions are kind of a dime a dozen (even though they're nice), but +15 all defenses [which stacks with deflection-only bonuses] really makes your front-line characters tanky.

edit: but also agree that eothas as SC isn't great. the eothas symbol is more of an argument for single-classing xoti as a priest of gaun and bringing her along, who gets a symbol of eothas and a bunch of other useful spells.

Edited May 8, 2020 by thelee

[Elric Galad]

8 minutes ago, thelee said:

edit: but also agree that eothas as SC isn't great. the eothas symbol is more of an argument for single-classing xoti as a priest of gaun and bringing her along, who gets a symbol of eothas and a bunch of other useful spells.

And at least, her freaking Lashing Vine is one of the only Summon to "scale" properly. For druid, it is relatively bad compared to Call to the Primordials, but for Xoti it isn't a bad summon (without PL inconvenience from Incarnate).
This thing has a PEN of 14 at level 20.
There might be better thing to do with a Tier IX spell. But since you get it for free !

[2MuchWatching]

I always bring Xoti along for the ride. Usually as SC priest with vine at pl9  I recently finished a run with MC single class monk and to fill the monk-shaped void in my life I decided to switch around so playing priest MC and Monk Xoti this time. Its not optimal but its working so far. Lockdown fun eh